Pitch figures critically in the perception of music, speech, and environmental sounds. Classically, pitch has been characterized as the perceptual correlate of the fundamental frequency (F0) of a sound. However, many real-world tasks thought to rely on pitch could in principle be performed without computing F0. We investigated the relationship between pitch and F0 in a battery of pitch-related music and speech tasks, comparing performance for standard harmonic sounds with inharmonic sounds that lack a clear F0. Our results indicate that the perception of pitch contours in speech or music is equally robust for harmonic and inharmonic sounds, but that musical pitch intervals and speaker identity can only be accurately perceived when sounds are harmonic and thus have an F0. The results suggest that there may be two or three distinct systems responsible for what has conventionally been couched as pitch perception: one which tracks shifts in fine spectral patterns, independent of F0, another that is dependent on F0 for determining precise interval relationships between musical notes, and perhaps another associated with voice qualities.

UPCOMING COG LUNCH TALKS

• 11/29/16 - Lindsey Powell, Saxe Lab
• 12/13/16 - Dimitrios Pinotsis, Miller Lab